


A Light in the Dark

by brinnanza



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4342967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her safety lies in anonymity, and hanging around the palace will inspire unwanted questions, but Bail Organa is the closest thing she can think of to a tiny sliver of something like home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Light in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a follow up to/was inspired by [this Tumblr post](http://brinnanza.tumblr.com/post/123761492691/questions-i-require-answers-to-immediately-what). Thanks to Aadarshinah for the beta!

It’s dangerous and stupid and incredibly, needlessly reckless, but she’s on Alderaan anyway, and so, somehow, Ahsoka ends up in front of the Aldera Royal Palace.

It’s late and she shouldn’t be seen here. Her safety lies in anonymity, and hanging around the palace will inspire unwanted questions, but Bail Organa is the closest thing she can think of to a tiny sliver of something like home. It’s absurd, really--she barely even knows Bail, has never spoken to him outside of strictly professional contexts. But so much has slipped through her fingers, people she’s loved and places she’s thought of as home, and she’s determined to hold onto this piece, small though it may be.

After a brief internal battle, she decides to give the palace guard her real name. Bail might recognize the alias she’s currently working under, but she doesn’t want to tie him to that name if she doesn’t have to--it’s safer for both of them that way. To her surprise, the royal guard leads her back to the palace’s residential suite, leaving her standing nervously in the doorway to Bail Organa’s sitting room.

“Ahsoka,” he greets warmly, though his surprise is evident in the Force. “Please, come in. Should I have been expecting you? Not that it isn’t lovely to see you.”

“No, no,” she says, putting her hands up placatingly and stepping into the room. Now that she’s here, this all seems like a spectacularly bad idea, but there’s nothing for that now. “I’m sorry for not comming, but I was in the area and I just thought--” She runs a hand over her montrails. “I just thought we could… talk?” She looks up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.

He studies her for a moment, face thoughtful. “Of course. Please have a seat.” He gestures to the sofa on the other side of the room. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Oh, um, yes, please,” she says. Maybe a drink will calm her nerves a little. She crosses to the sofa and sits, laying her hands in her lap.

Bail joins her there a moment later with a square bottle of amber-colored liquid and two short glasses. He pours a little in one of the glasses, considers it, then pours a little more and hands it to Ahsoka.

Ahsoka takes a cautious sip as Bail pours his own glass and then sets the bottle on the low caf table. She can’t help wrinkling up her nose at the taste and it burns when she swallows, but the heat that flares in her chest in its wake is pleasant enough. 

“I suppose Corellian whiskey isn’t to everyone’s tastes,” Bail says diplomatically, a note of good humor in his voice. He swirls the liquid in his own glass and sips it.

Ahsoka takes another drink, a little smoother this time. She wraps her hands around the glass and sits back against the back of the sofa, eyes on her lap. They sit in silence for several long moments. It should be awkward, and she guesses it is a little, but mostly she’s comforted sitting next to a being that knows her real name, knows who she was before… this.

Eventually, Bail turns to her and says, “Was there something in particular…?”

“No, I just--I was on Alderaan anyway and I--” She turns the glass in her hand and fiddles with her skirt as her words trip over themselves. How is she supposed to explain what she needs to this man she barely knows? The work she’s doing now, intelligence mostly, covert by necessity - things that would have bored her younger self to tears or mischief at least - is important, but she spends so much time under the hood, hiding her face and her name and her whole life and it’s so--

“Did Padme ever tell you,” she says suddenly, her voice catching briefly on the name, “about the time she had me smuggle her onto Raxus?” 

Bail raises both eyebrows at her sudden change of topic. “The Separatist capital? No, she didn’t.” He considers it. “Somehow, I’m not surprised. She always did what she thought was necessary, regardless of consequences.” The corners of his mouth quirk up in a faint smile. “What happened?”

Ahsoka tells him. The politics don’t matter anymore, not now that there are no more sides to choose between, and it feels so long ago now, two or three lifetimes ago.

“She just wanted peace,” Ahsoka finishes, voice made soft with the weight of loss. “We didn’t even know what that meant.”

Bail lays a comforting hand on her arm. “We’ll have peace again.”

“Will we?” She has the strangest feeling, like maybe they won’t be around to see it.

“I have to believe we will.” Bail leans forward to splash another couple of fingers of whiskey into his glass. He arches an inquiring eyebrow at Ashoka, and she holds out her own empty glass for him to refill.

She sips it, used enough to the taste by now that it no longer burns. Her whole body is warm and a little numb, like everything has the volume turned down just a bit.

Bail says, “I should tell you about the time Padme almost got into a fistfight on the Senate floor.”

“A fistfight?” Ahsoka echos, voice disbelieving. “I can’t see Padme using… ‘aggressive negotiations’.”

Bail laughs, a smooth baritone chuckle that warms Ahsoka almost as much as the alcohol. “It was Senator Orn Free Taa--if you’d ever met him, you’d understand the impulse.” Ahsoka shakes her head; she can’t recall having had the pleasure. “She was in the middle of an important speech---I don’t remember what it was about now--and he kept interrupting. I thought Padme was going to jump into his repulsorpod and deck him.” He shakes his head, eyes bright with mirth. “I saw her arguing with him later. She was furious. It very nearly came to blows.”

Ahsoka can’t help but grin. “I’d have liked to see that.”

“Trust me,” Bail says seriously, “she might have been small, but when she was angry, you didn’t want to be anywhere near her until she calmed down.”

Ahsoka remembers the sting of rebuke on Raxus, but she’s glad she’s never been the focus of a truly irate Padme Amidala. “Hey, size isn’t everything,” she says, gesturing to herself. She’s a lot taller now than she was at 14, but she certainly knows how it feels to be dismissed for being short.

“Indeed,” agrees Bail. He pauses, then continues, his voice more solemn, “She was an extraordinary woman.”

There’s a murmur in the Force, something almost familiar, and Ahsoka looks up sharply. There’s a little girl standing in the doorway that leads to the rest of the residence. She’s maybe four years old, dressed in a white sleeping tunic with a braid of dark hair pinned in a crown around her head. “Papa?” she says, her voice thick with sleep.

“Leia,” Bail chides, leaning forward to set his glass on the caf table. “You should be in bed.” The girl, Leia, Ahsoka supposes, crosses the room and crawls up into Bail’s lap.

“I heard you talking,” she says, rubbing at her eyes with one pudgy fist. Her face is creased from her pillow, and her hair is escaping its plait in a halo of flyaway strands.

Bail frowns. The look on his face suggests her bedroom is a little far to have overheard the low conversational tones they’d been using.

Ahsoka can’t help but stare. There’s something in the Force, something she almost recognizes. It’s on the tip of her tongue, like an almost-remembered name or the memory of a dream. It’s nebulous and fuzzy and she can’t pin it down, but then she looks over and meets Leia’s curious gaze, and Ahsoka realizes it’s her.

It’s impossible. Ahsoka shouldn’t be able to sense the girl in the Force at all. She shifts her attention briefly to Bail, but he doesn’t register. No one does. She’s spent so many years with the suffocating loneliness in her own mind, almost crushing after spending an entire childhood surrounded by thousands of beings just a mental touch away. She’s been so alone for so long that this gentle touch, unfocused and hazy--the girl isn’t even aware--makes Ahsoka’s breath catch in her chest.

She aches to reach out with the Force, reassure herself that this isn’t a dream, that there is at least one being still wrapped in light. That there’s someone else in the back of her mind, on the periphery of her senses instead of just her, just her and thousands of beings she can’t touch.

She doesn’t. She wonders if Bail even knows what his daughter could be capable of. Once upon a time, the Jedi Order would have approached him, spirited the girl away to Coruscant for training, but now…

Now it’s just Ahsoka, and she’s not even a Knight, just a former Padawan with too much experience in war.

She draws on the Force for calm and takes a deep breath. “Hi there,” she says to the girl. “My name is Ahsoka.” She holds out her hand to shake.

The girl grips her hand with tiny formal fingers. “I’m Leia. It’s very nice to meet you.” She twists around to look up at her father, then looks back at Ahsoka. “Who were you talking about?”

Ahsoka says, “Oh, just an old friend.”

Bail says, “Your mother.”

Ahsoka manages to keep the shock off of her face, but only barely. 

Padme’s daughter.

Which means her father must be--

Ahsoka can’t even think it. She’s good at keeping secrets, has spent the last several years trafficking in them, but this is far too big, too dangerous to even consider. 

She can’t know this.

Bail should know better.

But there isn’t time to discuss it now because Leia is saying excitedly, “You knew my mother?” All trace of sleepiness is gone from her expression and she’s sitting straight up in Bail’s lap.

Ahsoka shoots Bail a look over Leia’s head that promises a lengthy talk about this later, far away from little eavesdropping ears, then says to Leia, “Yes, I did.” 

“I wish I could remember her,” Leia says, her face scrunched up in a frown. “But I was too little when she died. Papa has some holos though. She was very beautiful.”

Ahsoka’s never met Breha Organa, but she says, “Yes, she was.” She blinks against the sudden ache in her chest, even as the ghost of a smile touches her lips. She meets Bail’s eyes briefly before staring down at her hands in her lap, wrapped around her empty glass. “She was…. She was very kind to me,” she says quietly.

There’s a long beat of silence, and then Bail clears his throat and says, his voice a little rough, “I think it’s time to get you back to bed, little one.” He sweeps Leia up in his arm and stands up. 

Leia tries to struggle out of his grip, but Ahsoka can see her eyelids are drooping and her protests at half-hearted. “But I want to hear more about mama,” she says, voice sliding toward a whine.

“Another time, my love,” Bail soothes, one hand rubbing a circle on her back, and Leia drops her head onto his shoulder. He turns to Ahsoka. “Ahsoka--”

She gets to her feet as well, setting her glass on the table. “I should be going anyway; it’s late. Thank you for your hospitality, Bail. And Leia, it was lovely to meet you.”

Leia hums a tired noise and snuggles into Bail’s shoulder. Ahsoka reaches out a hand, then thinks better of it and withdraws.

“Of course,” says Bail. “Let me just--”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Ahsoka interrupts, laying a hand on Bail’s arm. “I can see myself out.” Bail looks unsure, ever the consummate diplomat, but Ahsoka continues, “It was nice to see you. This was… We should do this again sometime.”

She looks up to meet Bail’s eyes, and he smiles. “I’d like that.”

Ahsoka lets her hand linger for a moment more, then she says, “Goodnight, Bail.”

“Goodnight, Ahsoka.”

A security officer leads her back through the palace and out into the cool Alderaanian night. She pauses just outside of the gates, turns back to look at the palace, and risks a careful tendril of the Force, too subtle to detect. Leia’s there, peaceful with sleep, a bright spot in the endless dark. She can’t feel Bail in the Force, but he’s there, she knows, and for the moment, that’s enough.

 

END


End file.
